1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of collaborative computing and more particularly to addressing collaborative objects in a collaborative computing environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
The rapid development of the Internet has led to advanced modes of communication and collaboration. Using the Internet as a backbone, individuals worldwide can converge in cyberspace to share ideas, documents and images in a manner not previously possible through conventional telephony and video conferencing. To facilitate collaboration over the Internet, a substantial collection of technologies and protocols has been assembled to effectively deliver audio, video and data over the single data communications medium of the Internet. These technologies include document libraries, e-mail messaging, instant messaging, chat rooms, and application sharing.
Conventional collaborative computing includes combinations of collaborative technologies in order to provide a means for members of a collaborative community to pool their strengths and experiences to achieve a common goal. For instance, a common goal can include an educational objective, the completion of a software development project or even the creation and use of a system to manage human resources. A collaborative computing community generally can be defined by (1) a particular context, i.e. the objective of the environment, (2) membership, i.e., the participants in the environment, (3) a set of roles for the members, and (4) resources and tools which can be accessed by the membership in furtherance of the objective of the environment. A role is a classification applied to a subset of the people in the environment that acts as a placeholder for the subset of the people in dictating access to the resources and tools within the environment, as well as defining the behavior of the community members.
Oftentimes, collaborative objects in a collaborative computing environment can be addressed in one form or another. In the basic circumstance, an e-mail or an instant message can be addressed to different recipients. In a more complicated circumstance, an e-meeting can be scheduled to include different participants—both required and optional (as well as “information only”). In yet even a more complicated circumstance, activities and tasks can be assigned or delegated to one or more persons or roles. In all cases, the mental process of selecting an appropriate distribution list for a collaborative object can be tedious and error prone.
In the past, to facilitate in the formulation of a distribution list for an e-mail message, comparable addressee lists used in previously transmitted e-mails have been used to suggest the addressee list for a new e-mail message. In particular, where a composed e-mail message includes only a partial form of the previously used addressee list, logic coupled to the e-mail client can suggest adding the excluded e-mail addresses to the addressee list. In this way, the mistake of accidentally omitting addressees from an address list can be avoided.
Though inferring omitted names from an addressee list can be helpful in detecting the exception of under-addressing an e-mail message, the problem remains of determining when impermissible addressees have been included in an e-mail message. In many circumstances, inadvertently including an addressee in an e-mail message can result in undesirable consequences—particularly where the e-mail message contains sensitive or otherwise private information.
E-mail addressing is only the most basic of tools in a collaborative computing environment. Other collaborative objects remain unprotected from the mistake of accidental mis-addressing. Of course, the problem of inadvertently included addresses in an addressee list for an e-mail message can be extended to inadvertently included persons in a distribution list for any collaborative object.